Abstract. A global sensitivity analysis is used to describe the response of the Earth Climate Model of Intermediate Complexity LOVECLIM to components of the astronomical forcing (longitude of perihelion, obliquity, and eccentricity) assuming interglacial boundary conditions. Compared to previous studies, the sensitivity is global in the sense that it considers the full range of astronomical forcing that occurred during the Quaternary. We provide a geographical description of the variance due to the different components and their combinations and identify non-linear responses. The methodology relies on the estimation of sensitivity measures, which due to the computational cost of LOVECLIM cannot be obtained directly. Instead, we use a fast surrogate of the climate model, called an emulator, in place of the simulator. A space filling design (a maximin Latin hypercube constrained to span the range of astronomical forcings characterising the Pleistocene) is used to determine a set of experiments to run, which are then used to train a reduced-rank Gaussian process emulator. The simulator outputs considered are the principal modes of the annual mean temperature, precipitation, and the growing degree days, extracted using a principal component analysis. The experiments are run on two distinct land surface schemes to address the effect of vegetation response on climate. Sensitivity to initial conditions is also explicitly assessed. Precession and obliquity are found to contribute equally to growing degree days (GDD) in the Northern Hemisphere, and the effects of obliquity on the response of Southern Hemisphere temperature dominate precession effects. Further, compared to the original land-surface scheme with fixed vegetation, the LOVECLIM interactive vegetation induces non-linear responses in the Sahel-Sahara and Arctic sea-ice area. Finally, we find that there is no synergy between obliquity and precession.
Interpretation of non-linear empirical data-based process models using global sensitivity analysis
